Proxies vs Web Based Voting Solutions

Has anyone had any experience with SECURE WEB BASE VOTING SOLUTIONS? Just curious, since I don't believe in proxies. I can tell you that we've seen some serious abuses of proxy fraud in the last few years. Residents may just sign the proxy without filling out the entire form, in order to get the proxy solicitor out of their doorway. Here's where there's a chain of custody issue with the proxy. Once the solictor has the proxy, they can fill it out however they wish. Technically no resident may hold more than 5 total proxies, but that doesn't prevent the proxy solicitor from just filling out the form in the manner in which they choose and then they can mail it in as if the resident was mailing it in. Any ideas?

There is some information here:
http://www.votenet.com/viewpressrelease.cfm?id=34&type=eballot

Legality is not mentioned; nor is how they handled members with no Internet access. They just give examples of where they did e-voting for HOAs. If anyone calls them to get info, please post the answers here. Thanks.

This is a great topic by the way....

You mentioned the word 'secure', so I wanted to point out that no online system is really 'secure' and for that matter, no offline system is either. For example, have a look at the part of this BLOG titled, "Pentagon's electronic voting system not secure". It's about a $22 Million system that was deemed insecure. A HOA spending a few $hundred certainly can't expect to be really 'secure'.
http://www.votelaw.com/blog/archives/election_administration/

So the real question will be, 'Is it secure enough?' to support online voting. I believe one way to handle this will be to hire a 3rd party voting company to handle the election and never try and do your own online voting (not that anyone is considering that?) The independent 3rd party would at least provide a tested system and some standards to prevent problems. You would need some kind of official paperwork from the 3rd party documenting procedures and results as an official record in case the election was ever challenged. After all that, would it really be legal?

It will be interesting to see how the legal system sorts out online voting for HOAs and all the way up to our presidential elections.

Some major challenges are:
(1) How to verify the 'vote' was made by the intended 'voter'.
(2) How to handle paper votes and still be cost/time effective.

In any case, due to (1), you would need to physically mail something (voter ID code, etc) to every potential voter and ensure each code is only used once and then only used by the intended person. Also ensure that no vote is cast by paper & online by the same 'voter'.

Online voting has huge advantages and many challenges.

We have an upcoming referendum that will be voted on at a special February Meeting. The Board is planning on walking around to each Home passing out ballots and collecting proxies. The Board is pushing hard and attempting to use scare tactics to obtain votes. Does anyone know if it is legal for them to physically pass out ballots and proxies - and collect proxies at the same?

Thanks for all the responses, folks. We know that some folks don't trust this methodology, nevertheless; I think there's more opportunity for proxy fraud and web based voting may make it easier for owners to vote.
I guess the next step is to do some more research through these vendors as well as our own HOA attorney who is on retainer. We'll update you later. Thanks again.

Is phone votes and emails votes legal? Should an association make a motion to accept this kind of votes before doing so?